Sam Whitelock allowed himself a brief and rare moment of reflection with Sonny Bill Williams as the pair discussed being at a third Rugby World Cup, with a chance to win the William Webb Ellis trophy for a record third time.
The pair, along with captain Kieran Read, have the chance to become the first three-time World Cup winners having appeared at the 2011 and 2015 tournaments.
“I get along with Sonny and Kieran very well, at the opening for us as New Zealand and All Blacks we had to line up alphabetically, so Sonny and I were standing next to each other,” Whitelock told media.
“We did share a couple of moments where we just said, ‘how awesome was it to do this in New Zealand, then in England and then do it now.’”
On the prospect of becoming a three-time winner, Whitelock reverted to the old cliché of one day at a time.
“It would be awesome to achieve that but if you start thinking that way, you potentially get into a lot of trouble,” Whitelock said.
He still said the lessons from the disastrous loss to France in the quarter finals in 2007 were still reverberating around this team despite there being no players from that campaign.
“In 2007, I was living in Australia and I remember Australia were knocked out first and then the All Blacks were knocked out after and the front line of the paper in Australia was 'All Blacks gone'.
“It was something for me, it was very interesting being in another country, there are some key learnings for us as a current squad to take away from those previous World Cups.”
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